Bright & Dark

A few days ago, a friend asked me how I produce so much fiction. I almost told her that I’m not one to admire right now in that department; I’m under a lot of stress and have very little energy for writing. I’m still producing, but very slowly by my own reckoning. I didn’t say that to her, though, because everything is relative. If someone isn’t producing anything at all at the moment, my 15 pages a week may seem like pie in the sky.

In the last month and a half since I returned home from the Mystery Intensive, I’ve had the same close family member in the hospital three times with as yet no permanent resolution in sight, I’ve thrown my back out once in a medium-bad sort of way and then two weeks later again in a very-bad way, and I’ve had assorted other large stressors on top of those things. Not to mention that in the middle of all that, the Doggie Ranger up and pulled a muscle in his right hind leg and for two weeks couldn’t perform his favorite activity — jumping — to save his life. And, yes, that includes getting into the car to go to the vet for x-rays, which means that Mom With the Bad Back had to do some lifting she shouldn’t have.

In the past, all of this might have stopped me from writing period, full stop. This time around, I’ve made it a point to have a short-term goal and then meet it, even if it would normally take me 4 days and instead took twice that. I have managed to write 3 chapters to go with 2 of the different novel proposals I wrote at the workshop. One of them has been mailed and the other is with my first reader and will be mailed next week. I’ve started a short story that I plan to finish this weekend, and which should be in the mail next week as well. Then I’ll move on to the next set of chapters for one of the other novel proposals. Then another short story. And so on.

One of the other things I’ve made a point of doing is to seize time where I find it. The other day I found 20 unaccounted-for minutes in the morning before work. 20 minutes is one page of writing — the first page of the above-mentioned short story. I’ve had an hour here or there, and in one case, three whole hours, but I’m not setting requirements for how much time I “must have” to sit down and write. Any time in which I have the energy to write is enough “must have” for me.

In the supporting category — in other words, not actually writing new words — I’ve made sure to keep everything in the mail. If it comes back, it goes out again the same day or, if that’s not possible, the next. No stories piling up either on the dining table or in my inbox to stare at me accusingly. In fact, there will be no staring of any kind, buster. Only mailing.

I’ve kept reading, too, filling the well with fabulous stories written by other people. Oh, sure, there’s been plenty of comfort-food type movie and/or TV watching; sometimes that’s really all the energy I have. Monday was one of those days. I curled up on the sofa with a big bowl of popcorn and an icepack (injured back and all that) and watched all three Pirates of the Carribean movies in a row. And then Tuesday I cracked open Justin Cronin’s The Passage, which I am loving (and which is really, really hard to put down; kudos to Mr. Cronin).

In addition to fiction, there’s been Very Helpful and Informative Other Writing. First on the recommendation list are Dean Wesley Smith’s blog, especially his Killing the Sacred Cows of Fiction posts, and of late his free fiction of the week — a new short story every week. Good stuff. And also first (because in this world, there are two firsts), Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog, especially her Freelancer’s Survival Guide posts.

And, last but not least (and maybe not even last, since I’m sure I’m forgetting something), I’ve been posting to my weekly goal list. It’s the kind of list that is encouraging rather than discouraging of my attitude and accomplishment rate, and at this stage of 1 month + of life rolls, I need all the encouragement I can get, and am happy to pass a bunch along to others as well.

So: achievable short-term goals, seize time where I find it, keep everything in the mail, read, and encourage/be encouraged. In these ways, slow and steady in times of crisis can stay in the race.

An interesting article with much food for thought — The Pleasures of Imagination, from the June 8, 2010, issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

As a writer, I spend a lot of time in my imagination. It’s one of the reasons I also consider movement to be so important, and am not physically satisfied unless I’ve had some exercise on any given day. It’s easy, if I spend so much time in my head, to neglect the rest of me. But I digress.

I spend plenty of time making up stories, translating them to the page (or computer screen). And then I spend some more time reading and watching other people’s stories, and sometimes re-reading and re-watching them — the book and TV versions of comfort food. And then I make up all sorts of things I never write, or if I write them it happens much later and I’d be hard-pressed to recognize the reappearance of a former daydream. My life would be much poorer without all of this imagining.

There is a certain point at which fantasizing for the sake of fantasizing becomes only a means of escape rather than an exercise of creativity (and, yes, those two can be and often are the same thing, but the difference I’m talking about here is in degrees). If all of the energy is hurtling towards escape and none of it towards creation, then things are out of balance, and I’d best drive myself to Nia and cook something succulent for dinner. And write.

The main point of the article that people experience lives and situations different from their own through imagination, and that although we know rationally that what we’ve imagined (or what the TV producers have dreamed up) is not real, some part of us believes that it is. The term the article uses to differentiate that state is “alief.”

For instance, some fictional characters have become so real to me through re-reading or re-watching that their stories have become part of my personal mythology on some level. To name a handful, Stuart Redman and Nick Andros of Stephen King’s The Stand and the characters of the Joss Whedonverse from Buffy to Mal. While this is interesting to me, this alief as regards these stories and characters, what I find even more interesting is the way the alief translates to or informs my own philosophy of living. I’ve said several times that certain stories have completely changed the way I see the world, and certainly the way I act within it.

The part of this translation the article makes me think of most is something I’ve also written and talked about — I wrote an entire novel based on the premise that a society that loses its stories ceases to exist. A society that continues to create its stories, and to evolve them, thrives.

Based on the quality (in any way you choose to interpret that word), what kind of society are we?

I spent last week on the Oregon coast at a mystery writing intensive taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Twelve professional writers + lots of writing and reading. So much fun and so much hard work.

Over the course of six days, we each produced six novel proposals in various mystery subgenres — cozy, PI/detective, police procedural, hardboiled, and noir. We also wrote two noir short stories. And we, of course, read all the work each other produced.

Peppered in among all this for me were good conversations with folks I don’t often spend much time with and walks on the beach — except for Tuesday, with its overlapping deadlines. No walk. I almost started killing people outside my fiction. So, lesson learned and applied on Friday, the other day of overlapping deadlines.

Bonus: On Saturday, Scott William Carter signed his debut novel The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys at North by Northwest. If you haven’t got a copy already, you want to buy one. It’s a riveting read, and often laugh out loud funny.

I learned a ton at the workshop. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to have taken the workshop from such an amazing teacher and with so many great writers.

The stories are already out in the wide world. Now to add chapters to all those novel proposals and get those out as well.

On your mark. Get set. Go!

About a month ago, I wrote a short post here that mentioned writing what feels dangerous. I didn’t go into any real detail at the time because I actually didn’t have the time, and because it felt like something I wanted to cogitate on a some more before I said anything else about it. Having had all this time to think, I still don’t know what’s going to come through my fingers on this topic, but it feels like it’s time to write about it. I’m talking about a piece of my own writing process here, not making general statements about what other folks should or should not do.

So, danger. What makes a topic dangerous? Risk.

It doesn’t have to be risk to life and limb, although for some people — reporters in war zones, people who tell the truth to power under repressive regimes, those who blow the whistle on wrongdoing in the wrong place at the wrong time — it is. Sometimes it’s a risk to livelihood – take the Dixie Chicks, for example, and their comments about George W. Bush at a time when those words evoked outrage in a politically polarized environment. I know, I know. These days, is there any other kind of political environment around here? Let’s face it, for writers like me it’s not any of those things. There is no danger, grave or otherwise, to me in the act of writing a story.

Now that that’s out of the way, I want to move on to what I mean.

In my personal experience, living the life of privilege that I do with mostly plenty of everything I need and some things I want, the risk is in revealing myself. In letting air and light into the family skeleton closet when those old bones and sinews have influenced me down to my molecules. Or worse, showing myself parts of me I don’t want to know about or examine, or possible didn’t even know existed in the first place.

To be clear, every piece of fiction I write is meant to be submitted into the wide world of markets for publication, so I’m aware that no matter what my experience is in writing a story or a novel, the goal is for somebody else (and hopefully a lot of someone elses) will read it. Am I worried about baring my soul (and the souls of my characters) to the world? No. Not for a second. What scares me is the act of baring my soul to myself.

I’ve had lots of practice doing it. It never gets old. And I never quite get used to it, especially when I draw back the curtain of my inner recesses and there’s some unexpected, gut-wrenching feeling or idea that demands to be explored in words.

The insidious shame of regret. (“Ashes,” just completed and mailed, about a runner-inner who rescues women and children from house fires as penance for not having rescued his own family, and the washed up theater janitor who learns to live by his example.)

Unexpected depth of outrage. (“Outcast,” published in Chizine, created from outrage over the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.)

Grief and loss. (“The Truth According to Margot Williams,” published in Fantasy Magazine, exploring grief over the loss of my grandmother.)

Or I could talk about the novel I’m percolating now and about to start work on, which story I won’t discuss because I don’t discuss works in progress. But I can say about it that the initial impulse of the book stems from the almost subconscious unwillingness to face certain kinds of loneliness in myself. “Almost” because, while it remained subconscious for a long time, I managed to unearth it with the help of a friend who poked me in the eye with a spear. After all, what are friends for?

You could say that all of these things are run-of-the-mill emotions, or just that everyone has them or some variation on them, and you’d be right. But it’s not acknowledging the emotion that I’m talking about here. I’m talking about digging into these things until what I’m feeling when I write is risky.

The common writing advice is “write what you know,” which most people take to mean “write about subjects you know.” That’s not it at all. If every writer wrote only about subjects they’re experts on or have experience with, there’d be a lot of stories that would never have been and would never be written. I don’t know anything about mountain climbing but I could make up a story about mountain climbing with a few details and I could make it riveting and vital because the story isn’t really about the mountain or the climbing. It’s about the people. Writers make shit up. Some of us make shit up with varying levels of research. Either way, it’s still creating a story out of whole cloth.

The more distilled version of the advice I’ve heard is “write what you’re passionate about,” to which I say, yes, absolutely. But I don’t think passion is entirely what I’m after when I write either, at least not all the time.

I want the occasional risk and the discovery, and the subtle and sometimes not so subtle shifts that come from them.

I don’t need it for every story. I don’t even want it for every story. That would be exhausting, as much as I’m writing, and frankly unnecessary. But having it pop up every so often reminds me that story can be a great revealer and changer of minds and hearts, especially my own.

Go here and read the Freelancer’s Guide posts. All of them. They’re invaluable.